House sitting in Vancouver

Field report · updated 2026-07-27 · live corpus

Owners who listed here mostly had sitters to choose between: 84% of 443 watched listings drew at least two applications within 48 hours. Vancouver has 95 open sits across 75 homes right now. Living in sits is good here: 130 gapless days across 4 back-to-back sits starting 31 Jul.

Open sits95across 75 homes
Applicants / sit2.2tracked-city median 1
Median stay7 nights54% run a week+
Posting lead8 wkhalf post 32–81d out
Gapless days1304 back-to-back sits, from 31 Jul
Plan your dates in Vancouvergood
7.3 sits open on a typical day

Pick your window. We chain the open sits that hand over cleanly inside it — computed right here, nothing sent anywhere.

The open listings chain into 130 consecutive housed days across 4 back-to-back sits beginning 31 Jul — good, against the cities we track. At least one sit is open on 135 consecutive days from today, which is the ceiling — those windows overlap and cannot all be taken.

31 Jul4 handovers · 130 nights8 Dec

Remove that chain and 59 days, 47 days, 37 days (+1 more) remain — 5 sitters could live here at once.

todayopen sits · next 90 days · never a day with nothing open+90 d
Supply by start month
6 months listed today

Hosts post about 8 weeks ahead (half between 32–81 days) — for far-out dates, most options don't exist yet.

Listing? Posting about 8 weeks out is normal here.

July 2026
7
August 2026
35
September 2026
31
October 2026
9
November 2026
5
December 2026
5
For pet parents · what actually happened
watched 2026-05-01 → 2026-07-27
84%

of owners had a choice of sitters within 48 hours

about 8 in 10 · n=443 · ±3pp
the 43 measured cities run 22%–95% · median 77%
37%

filled to the five-application cap within 48 hours

each watched from zero applications
for scale: 1,167 sits provably completed here in the last 12 months · 3,759 since 2014
by year (floors): 2023 586 · 2024 864 · 2025 1,193

Floors, not verdicts — fast-filling listings are the ones most likely to escape measurement, and these are 48-hour rates: a speed gauge, not eventual success; many sits fill after the window. How we measure →

For sitters · competition right nowcompetitive
95 open listings · snapshot

Open Vancouver listings average 2.2 applicants, and 27% currently have none at all.

Only 41% of listings have three or more applicants. Counts are as reported on each listing at our last refresh, across 95 open listings.

Stays & pets
75 homes open now

The median stay is 7 nights; 54% run a week or longer.

≤3 nights 26%4–7 30%8–14 25%15–28 18%29+ 1%

Of 75 homes: 34 are dogs-only, 29 cats-only, 8 keep both. Plan around the animals first — they are the job.

dogs only 45%dogs + cats 11%cats only 39%other / no pets 5%
How Vancouver compares
rank among 27 tracked cities
Sitter competition (competitive)77th percentile
Open supply (below the median)46th percentile
Chainability (good)69th percentile

Percentile rank among the 27 tracked cities with meaningful supply. Competition reads sitter-side: a higher percentile means more applicants per open listing — harder for sitters, busier for owners.

Common questions

Will my pet-sitting listing get applicants in Vancouver?

Measured, not guessed: of 443 Vancouver listings watched from zero applications, 84% received at least two applications within 48 hours, and 37% reached the five-application cap. Both are floors — fast-filling listings are the ones most likely to escape measurement — and both are 48-hour rates: listings often keep drawing applications after the window we count.

Do house sits actually get filled in Vancouver?

Yes — at least 3,759 sits have provably completed in Vancouver since 2014, 1,167 of them ending in the last 12 months. A completion requires a chosen sitter, so every one had at least one real application. These are floors from listing histories, and they cannot be turned into a fill rate: sits that went unfilled leave no trace, so there is no denominator.

How many sitters apply to a house sit in Vancouver?

Open listings currently average 2.2 applicants, 27% have none yet, and only 41% have three or more — snapshots across 95 live listings at last refresh, not final tallies.

How far in advance are Vancouver house sits posted?

The median listing appears about 8 weeks before its start date; half post between 32 and 81 days out.

How long is a typical house sit in Vancouver?

The median stay is 7 nights, and 54% of open sits run a week or longer.

Can you live in Vancouver full-time on house sits?

Today's board chains into 130 consecutive housed days across 4 back-to-back sits beginning 31 Jul. That is one bookable itinerary from live listings — it moves daily as sits are taken and posted.

Compare markets

All 27 tracked cities →

How these figures are computed

Open sits — live listings with a current or future date window; a home with several windows counts once per window.

Applicants — the count reported on each open listing at last refresh.

Posting lead — days between a listing first appearing and its start date, median across open listings.

Gapless days — the longest bookable run of consecutive covered days assembled from open sits beginning within the next 90 days: no overlaps, each sit starting the day the previous one ends.

Judgment words (“competitive”, “good”) are percentiles against the 27 cities in this corpus with meaningful supply — never editorial.

Full methodology — how these are measured, and what they cannot say.